Some on this board have discussed Docusign so here is some anecdotal data from me:
back in June I was looking to buy some rental property so I asked the Realtor if they used Docusign. They do and she was extremely happy with it, the price was very reasonable and she says it saves them tons of time and FedEx money (for instance you can’t forget to sign a line and then FedEx it back and then have to get it FedEx’ed again).
recently I had to move out all our belongings in another vacation rental for a reno and the small moving company had me sign the agreement via docusign, which was great because I was in a different state.
just now I got an email from my new Home insurance carrier saying they were going to send me the “paperwork” to sign via Docusign.
Sure looks like everyone is starting to use this app.
Yes, their name is becoming more ubiquitous. Sort of like Kleenex/noun or Google/verb.
I do see EchoSign from time to time (my company uses it) yet internally we still call it Docusign! Lot of our vendors use Docusign.
No deferred revenue in their model. That said, looks like they do have a good retention rate. From their latest earnings report:
We continue to achieve strong upsell in Q3 resulting in a net dollar retention rate of 114%. Strong upselling was also reflected in the number of customers with ACV greater than $300,000 which grew 57% year-over-year to a total of 285 customers. This was driven predominantly by existing customers continuing to increase their volumes and expand their use cases.
In Singapore, I have been using some freemium apps for enterprise purposes (both SMEs) by:
HelloSign (on Mobile and PC)
SignNow (on Mobile)
They have limited but functional utility that allows a certain amount of signage per month or with limited functionality. Both have been sufficient utility for legally binding corporate documents.
DocuSign isn’t the only player by any means but it is top of mind and probably market leader.
The one competitive point to keep track of is whether Adobe can merge its eSignature functionality with ecommerce contracting - if this happens it completely overtakes the DocuSign proposition as far as I understand.
Adobe should be able to do this given its capabilities in the eMarketing and eCommerce space.
Adobe should be able to do this given its capabilities in the eMarketing and eCommerce space.
Ant
For an investor, Docusign is “document management” pure play while Adobe comes with a lot of other baggage that you might or might not like. Document management (the signing is just a small part) is still in infancy and a focused player might be the better bet.
I’ve only had occasion to use it once when my stock broker sent me stuff to agree to and sign via HelloSign. Compared to paper, snail mail, and FedEx it was simpler, faster, cheaper, and much more convenient. I suppose at their end it must be much better organized record keeping and archiving. It’s hard to see this business not taking off.
I wonder if this business has network effect. It would if, say, the SEC and some other organizations (IRS?) adopted one as a preferred method of document delivery.
Denny Schlesinger
Investing in software is like being a kid in a candy store! All you are buying is pure invention. Bits and Bytes, no Atoms.
If DOCU can put together its ‘Systems of Agreement’ with e sign incorporated in it; then once the enterprises are used to this and their employees are trained; they are not going to migrate to another vendor - that will be too disruptive for their business and clients.
If you look at the history of software, usually one vendor has dominated and its offering has become the gold standard i.e. Office, PDF, Photoshop etc.
At present, Docusign controls roughly 38% of the market and it is way ahead when compared to Adobe and the other players.
Earlier today, I posted a summary of DOCU - if anyone is interested in the business, feel free to read it, all the best!